UFC GOES FIRST IN PRO SPORTS ARENA
White pleased to put his MMA fighters back in the Octogan
UFC President Dana White was typically unapologetic as he prepared to travel from his home in Las Vegas to Jacksonville, Fla., for Saturday’s UFC 249 pay-perview.
“Critics have never built anything,” he said in a phone interview with the L.A. Times. “I really don’t care what the critics have to say. Somebody has to be first, and it will be cool to be first and share this with our fans and people who will be watching for the first time.”
The first White was referring to was Saturday’s show, which will be the first live major professional sports event in the U.S. in nearly two months.
White was in- cluded last month when President Trump announced the formation of several panels designed to help reopen the economy when danger from the COVID-19 pandemic subsided. White was part of a group of league commissioners, executives and owners.
The other members have mostly kept quiet about the
UFC 249
Saturday: at Veterans Memorial Arena, Jacksonville, Fla.
Main card: Five fights headlined by Tony Ferguson vs. Justin Gaethje (lightweight interim title fight) and Henry Cejudo vs. Dominick Cruz (bantamweight title bout)
On the air: Prelims start at 5 p.m., ESPN; main card starts at 7, ESPN+ PPV
work, but White, who has publicly supported Trump, spoke about it. “It was great,” he said. “I thought the president did a great job on that call. Everybody involved and all the powers-that-be had great input, great ideas and great questions.
“A lot of times, you could be involved in something like that and feel like you wasted an hour and a half of your life, but that was not the case when I got off that call. I was proud to be a part of it, and it was very informative and very well done.”
White said his big takeaway was that Trump wanted sports to return as
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